Christopher Crawford: Documentary Photography

House At The End Of The Long Drive

As long as I can remember, there has been an abandoned farmhouse and several old barns surrounded by fields of corn or soybeans on a large plot of land on the southwest corner of Lower Huntington Road and Coverdale Road in rural southwest Allen County, Indiana.

The house was reached by a very long, rutted gravel driveway stretching south from Lower Huntington Road. The driveway was so long that in years when corn was grown in the fields in front of the house, the house would not be visible.

I photographed the long driveway many times over the years, in different weather and seasons, and had gone back and photographed the barns once.

In November, 2017 a friend told me that the old farmhouse was being demolished. I went out and met the man who was tearing the house down, and received his permission to photograph the place. He was taking the house apart by hand, so that he could salvage some of the wood from it, and was doing the work by himself